The first sentence or two of your essay must really grab your reader's attention. There are several ways to do this, outlined in the handout below.

Please note that you MUST begin with a literary open if you are writing a literary essay. That is, if your essay is about a piece you are analyzing, you must use the literary open. If you have a more generic topic, like "We learn the most through experience" or "Why recycling is important", you should be using one of the other techniques in the handout.